


all our yesterdays have lighted fools

by soapboxblues



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: F/M, One Shot, Pre-Canon, most likely AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-05
Updated: 2013-05-05
Packaged: 2017-12-10 10:25:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/784993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soapboxblues/pseuds/soapboxblues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone thinks they know the story,  <i>Miles introduced them, didn't you know?</i> It's a lie - a lie of omission - but still a lie. And Rachel watches the facts fade away until the lone truth remains: Miles met her first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all our yesterdays have lighted fools

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing. Title taken from Macbeth.

Everyone thinks they know the story, and they love to tell it because from the outside looking in, it seems incredibly sweet. _Miles introduced them, didn't you know?_ It's spun like some romantic set up, like Miles doesn't bury himself in a bottle of whatever liquor's closest whenever he's around his brother's family. Like Rachel doesn't spend her entire life waiting for her house of cards to fall down.

It's a lie of omission but still a lie. And Rachel watches the facts fade away until this lone truth remains: Miles met her first.

 

part i.

 

Rachel meets Bass first.

His mother knows hers and that's how he gets enlisted to drive her back and forth to dance class. If it were any other teenager, they would say no, but Bass will do anything his family asks. This - Rachel decides - is one of his most attractive qualities, along with his wit and his appreciation for the morbid side of life. Rachel tells him this, and he stares at her likes he not quite sure what to make of her.

"Are you sure you're only fifteen?" At first glance, he's a sweet boy - all 'yes ma'am' and 'no sir,' polite smiles and perfect posture. Her parents adore him, but Rachel can see right through his charm. She may be only fifteen to his seventeen, but Rachel's always had a thing for older boys - especially the ones like him. She knows the ones that are overly nice to your parents are the most trouble. 

\---

Before numbers and science, she is a dancer. She knows temps leve and tours en l'air like the back of her hand. In high school, she is part of the ABT Studio Company and performs The Nutcracker at fourteen - the youngest dancer ever to do so. And she remains the only dancer to quit for reasons other than extenuating circumstances. (She can still remember the look on Maestro Endo's face when she admits it was boredom and not a mental breakdown that tendered her resignation).

Miles meets her when she is still a dancer. He tags along with Bass, letting her bum a cigarette outside the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Bass warns Miles to stay away from ballerinas. They eat their young. Rachel thinks for a second he might be serious. It's hard to tell with that grin of his. She rolls her eyes all the same.

"I like a girl with ambition," Miles says with a wink. He is attractive in all the ways that Bass isn't. Where Bass was a devious streak hidden under polished charm, Miles was good intentions buried under blunt words. 

"Then you're going to love me," Rachel says as she leans close letting him light her cigarette. It will be the first and last one she smokes. Bass laughs, pats her on the shoulder like he's never been prouder. Miles watches her intently, waits for her to react. Her lungs burn and her cheeks ache, but she does not flinch.

\---

Bass warns her that Miles isn't like her usual older boys. 

Miles takes what he wants and does not waste a second caring about the consequences. He can be downright cruel to the people he's burned through. Not just lovers, but friends and family as well. He doesn't trust anyone as a rule - not even Bass.

He warns her and she listens because when Bass speaks his words are soft and smooth and they sound like gospel. (Sometimes she thinks it's Bass that she needs to be worried about, but that is a fleeting thought.)

It's sweet in its own way that Bass takes the time to warn her. Rachel isn't sure if he's telling her this for her own good or to keep her away from what Bass considers _his_. She still has a lot to learn about their relationship, and even once she's sure she's learned every thing there is to know, it’s not enough to make sense of it.

"But the thing is if he considers you a friend, it's all worth it." He pauses as if considering his next words carefully. "Just never expect it to end well."

(For both of them it ends with a knife in the back. Metaphorical, of course, although in Bass's case it could turn out literal. He should have heeded his own warning.)

\---

Bass and Miles fight over a girl whose name Rachel never bothers to remember.

The girl is Miles's high school sweetheart - the girl he has dated on and off for the past four years, the girl he plans to leave behind when summer draws to and end and he and Bass head to West Point. There is nothing really special about this girl. She's a little too much like both the boys and yet not different enough for either of them to let her stick. Rachel once makes the mistake of asking Miles if he is in love with the girl. He laughs in her face - one of those brief moments where she is reminded of Bass's warning about his cruelty. It's only a split second and then he is giving her a placating smile and telling her no.

"Miles wouldn't know love if it jumped up and bit him in the face" Bass says later. His laugh feels less awful.

"Do you love her?" Rachel asks. 

Bass's hands clench the steering wheel a little harder but he shakes his head, makes a few harmless taunts about love in general. If Rachel didn’t know him so well, she wouldn’t notice his discomfort.

\---

"Bass just brought you here to keep me away from Emma." Miles takes a sip from his plastic cup and grimaces. He hates watered down beer but at high school parties there's not many alternatives. Bass told her he brought her because she needed to relax more. She thought it was because he wanted a distraction from the girl who’s apparently named Emma. She had been wrong though.

"She's your girlfriend," Rachel says, gesturing to the corner where Monroe has pressed into Emma's space. Emma doesn't seem to have an issue with it. Neither does Miles apparently. He just takes another sip of his pathetic beer. 

"He has a thing for her."

"And that doesn't bother you." She means for it to be a question, but it comes out like a declaration instead. Miles shrugs.

"It should, shouldn't it?" When Rachel doesn't have an answer for him, he grabs the drink from her hand and settles it next to his on the coffee table behind them. "How about a dance?"

The song playing is both too slow and too fast to dance to but she wraps her arms around his neck and sways to whatever she can make of the beat. His breath against her ear sends chills down her spine and his hands edge just under the hem of her shirt. Two songs later he asks if she wants to get out of there. It takes all the strength in her to tell him thanks but no thanks. He smiles like it's the answer he wanted to hear.

\---

Fifteen is too young to be in love.

Miles is charming in a way that only the bad boys are. Her mother warned her not to turn out like her older sister - warned her in that tired way that said it was inevitable. Whatever Danielle did, her baby sister emulated. There was no hope for her picking the smart, safe boy. 

Miles picks fights with college boys - fights he'll always lose. There's nothing smart or sensible about it. And there is definitely nothing safe about loving a boy with a death wish. 

"You learn more when you lose than when you win," Miles says after a particularly rough night. He smirks but it's more like a twitch. The left side of his face is a collage of bruises and cuts, barely able to carry his humor. He winces as Rachel presses the towel to his forehead, frowning at the sight of him.

Rachel had become the girl who let Miles crash in her bedroom when he was too high or drunk to go home and face his parents. She’d be his alibi or his getaway driver. She'd clean up his messes because she knew how, and somehow without ever asking, Miles knew she'd be able to.

Rachel should be too young to know how to clean a wound or check for a concussion, but like everything else, she learned from Danielle, who'd curl up in the bathroom tub after a bad fight with her boyfriend and whisper to Rachel what to do next. When it was over, when the bandages were sealed, Danielle would make her promise not to tell a soul. This was Danielle's life at fifteen. It was Rachel's life from eight until Danielle went away to college. 

But Miles is right. You learn more from losses. When Rachel pulls the towel away, her cuffs are stained red from Miles' blood. Rachel is just grateful it's not her own.

\---

Bass throws Miles a party the night before he turns eighteen. It's the last party of the summer, the last party before Rachel heads back to school and Miles and Bass leave for West Point. As far as parties go, it's not the wildest, but it does bring with it plenty of drama. Someone breaks Mama Matheson's fake-Ming Dynasty vase (the Mathesons are on retreat in the Catskills which is why Bass chooses to throw the party there). Three fights break out. And eventually, Miles breaks up with Emma and spends the rest of the night with Rachel in his bedroom sharing a bottle of tequila, while Bass hooks up with Emma in the room next door. 

The cops never show up probably because Miles lives in the middle of nowhere.

"This is insane," Rachel whispers, trying to decide which is more traumatizing: listening to "Bye, Bye, Bye" repeat for the tenth time because there's a skip in the CD or focusing on the noises coming from the next bedroom. 

"Normal is boring," Miles says tossing the bottle into the trash can. It makes a solid thunk but doesn't shatter. For his part, he seems more phased by the music. He mutters something about how much he hates boy bands.

There’s another crash downstairs. Miles flinches like he wants to go down there and kick everyone out of the house but instead he leans back against the side of the bed. Rachel lays her head on his shoulder. "You should kiss me."

Miles shifts so that he can look her in the eye. "Yeah? Why's that?"

"Tomorrow you'll be eighteen and I'll be jailbait."

Miles laughs. It sounds like a dying sound. His hooks a finger under her jaw and tilts her head up. Rachel closes her eyes and waits. She can feel his breath ghosting over her lips. She waits and waits but nothing happens, until she's almost ready to just take the leap herself. Only then when she makes the slightest twitch forward does he speak, his voice so low she can barely hear it. "Do you think you'll still love me two years from now, Rachel?" 

Rachel's eyes snap open. She sees the mischievous look in his eyes and wants to cry in frustration. Instead she leans forward and presses her forehead against his, letting out a defeated sigh. "Who says I love you now?"

\---

The next morning she meets Ben.

He is making pancakes in the kitchen, maneuvering around half filled Dixie cups on the counters and what is either a passed out person or a pile of clothes next to the fridge. Rachel makes her way to the cupboard where Miles stashes the apple juice and crackers. She is still deciding whether she should say something to him or not when he makes the decision for her.

"Been here before I see," he says.

"Yes," Rachel says, "You must be Ben." 

"Guilty as charged."

She lingers by the kitchen island before taking a seat there. Ben looks nothing like Miles. Where his brother is all rough edges and lanky muscles, Ben is smooth, rounded planes and easy smiles. There's something about him that makes Rachel sit up and take notice - similar to how she feels when she's around Miles, but much less terrifying. There's a kindness to him that Miles, nice as he could be, would never be accused of. "I'm Rachel." 

Ben nods. "The dancer, right? Miles and Sebastian have mentioned you." 

Any other time Rachel would have zeroed in on the fact that Miles and Bass talk about her to Miles' family, but instead she's distracted by the fact that she's never heard anyone call Bass by his real name. She's also never seen someone make pancakes with cheese in them or take the time to make their orange juice straight from the actual orange - both of which she learns that Ben is particularly skilled it. 

She also discovers that Ben is a bioengineer who likes operas and early 90s music. He broke his back tooth when he was seventeen in a fight with Miles over who was the greatest football player of all time and once he managed to distract a group of German tourists with his knowledge of David Hasselhoff while his friends stole their cab so they could make it to a Black Crowes concert - something he regrets to this day because The Black Crowes turned out to be awful live.

Miles finds them chatting over breakfast. Ben wraps his arms around his little brother and wishes him happy birthday in the loudest voice he can find right into his ear. Miles winces but doesn't say a word. He props himself up on a stool and eats the toast Ben prepared him in silence, watching as Rachel and Ben continue their debate about Mystery Science Theater 3000 hosts. Eventually Ben excuses himself and Rachel watches him go. When she looks back, Miles is glaring at her.

"You should stay away from Ben."

Rachel wants to laugh. She is a fifteen year old girl and Ben is fresh out of college. They have absolutely nothing in common besides small talk and Miles, but there is something about the way Miles says it that makes her care little about what he saw to make him say it and everything about why it was said. "Why?"

Miles looks down into his coffee. "People like us aren't any good for him."

 

part ii.

 

Bass comes home on holidays, but Miles never looks back. Rachel tries not to take it personally.

"He's applying himself," Bass says, and there's a hint of smirk when he says it. Rachel rolls her eyes and laughs, trying to hide the disappointment. If Bass notices, he doesn't say anything, just takes another sip of his coffee and asks her about prom.

\---

He finally calls on her graduation night. She's at a house party down the block, drunk enough that she almost misses the call. She sobers when she catches the caller id, doing her best to contain her excitement. "It's been awhile, Miles."

"Two years," he says, and there's a hint of worry in his voice as though he's hoping she will not remember their last conversation. He hopes he can get away with having completely abandoned her.

"Yeah." Rachel says and then because it's the truth, "Nothing's changed."

Miles says nothing, but she can picture him nodding - just the barest tilt of his head to acknowledge her. He changes the subject to college and she lets him. It's a tiny victory.

\---

Rachel goes to college and Miles graduates from West Point. They still don't see each other. Miles is doing his first tour with the Marines. Rachel switches her focus to science. Moves to Chicago. Dates boys who are good for her. Lives in her little apartment and works a job serving coffee at a diner while she saves up for graduate school. It's a mature life that makes everyone proud. 

Sometimes she gets letters from Miles. She was so sure he'd forget about her the minute she left New York. Maybe she'd be privy to the occasional drunk dial, but not this - not something so archaic. The letters never say much but they always seem to show up when she needs them most. She writes back, always feeling her words are too much or not enough.

It becomes a constant - much like her work and her education and her boys. Much like science. It's a steady hum of predictability. It is what Rachel has become.

\---

 

It's been five years when he shows up at her door.

"Bass and I had a fight." There's evidence to it. A small cut over his brow, a set of raw knuckles, nothing much, but Rachel can smell the antiseptic and Band-Aids before she's even reached for the kit. As soon as she opens the door wider to let him in, he is hooking an arm around her waist and reeling her in for a kiss.

They barely make it to the bedroom.

\---

 

Miles is on leave for six weeks and without Bass he has no place to go. Rachel knows that's the only reason he's here. She doesn't complain. She is older now and there is no high school sweetheart between them. No Bass to remind either of them that it won't end well. He looks at her like she is all that matters and Rachel forgets that she's not. 

He curls up next to her on the couch and they watch old romances with their feet tangled together and his hand resting under the edge off her shirt. He laughs at the strangest parts - the lines that are meant to make the audience swoon or cry. She likes to watch him more than the actual movie. With her head pressed against his chest, she'll take as much time as she can to study him.

\---

He goes back for another tour, makes up with Bass. She's sure she won't see him again for another three years, but then he shows up seven months later - this time with Bass in toe. She gives both of them the grand tour of Chicago and then brings them out to meet her friends. She tries not to look completely dazed when Miles introduces himself as her boyfriend. Bass notices though and his kind enough to hide his laugh behind his drink.

Bass heads back to see his family, but Miles stays with her for the entirety of his leave. It becomes a pattern. Seven month deployment. Seven month leave spent with her. Each time he comes back he's a little more hollowed out, a little more dangerous, a lot like the boys Danielle brought home and it scares her the way his eyes darken after a particularly tough tour, the way his fists clench when they disagree.

He is not the Miles she met at fifteen. He is a different man now. That doesn't mean she can stop loving him.

\--- 

"It's normal, right?" Rachel asks. She's called Bass in the middle of the night because Miles had woken from a loud and nasty nightmare and locked himself in the bathroom. 

There's a notable pause in Bass's breathing, though it could just be him shaking the sleep. She could hear the rustling of sheets and the angry hissing of whatever woman was lucky enough to share Bass's bed for the night mistaking this call as something else. "You're not what he thinks you are. I keep telling him that."

"What am I doing wrong?"

Bass sighs, "Nothing. You're not missing anything." 

This much stays true - through even their worst moments and his worst nightmares - he never raises a hand to her, never mistakes her for something else. 

She still waits for the other shoe to drop.

\---

And then:

"I'm pregnant." She says. There is the briefest moment where it looks like Miles wants to smile, but it's gone fast, replaced with fear and then frustration and then worst of all nothing. Miles nods, like he's just processed her words in the same way he would if she admitted she had a taste for Thai food tonight or that she'd like to get a dog.

"I deploy in the morning." Miles says. (She never learns if this was the truth, but she expects it wasn't).

Later Rachel will wonder why she stood there waiting for more. Why she expected it, but Miles gives her nothing - swallows hard and moves past her into the bedroom. They lay side by side staring at the ceiling but never saying a thing. 

The next morning Miles is gone (this she expects) and there's an envelope full of money and another letter - this one telling her to take care of it. Her hands shake as she reads each carefully crafted word, each bittersweet truth. Take care of it, he says, because he will not be able to take care of either of them. It's full of self loathing and fear and all it does is make Rachel tired.

She burns that letter and uses the money to buy a crib.

\---

Scientists don't care much for fate, but it is somewhat ironic that two weeks after she finds out she's carrying Miles's child, she crosses paths with Ben. He is an engineer at the same lab she works for. It houses three thousand employees and they probably would have never crossed paths if it wasn't for the broken elevator in his wing. He remembers her, says he never forgets a pretty face - with all the earnestness that only a good man like him could pull off. For a minute she forgets that his brother shattered her life into pieces.

He makes routine stops to her lab after that. Her friends give her grief for it. They tell her it’s obvious he has a thing for her. She knows she should put an end to it, but then he'll ask her about Miles and she'll realize he misses his brother as much as she misses him. It's nice to have someone who understands what it's like to have Miles cut ties so fast it pulls the rug out from under them.

"We should have drinks sometime," Ben says. Rachel could count the days it took him to go from wanting to ask it to having the courage to do so.

"I'm pregnant," she blurts out.

Ben frowns, "I didn't know you had a boyfriend. I'm sorry."

"No, it's not like that," Rachel says, quickly. She knows this is her opening. _It's Miles's kid_ she wants to say. The words wait on the tip of her tongue, shoved aside for something else. "There's no boyfriend. It's just me and this baby."

"Oh." Ben says. "So drinks are out. How about dinner?" 

She knows she is not in a good place, that the timing is awful and worst of all, it's not just any baby – it’s his niece or nephew that she is carrying, but the words die in her throat at the prospect of something so normal. She says yes because she assumes it's just dinner. She assumes that like his brother, Ben will lose interest in her when this baby becomes real to him. 

Three months later she is engaged.

\---

Bass asks her why she's doing it.

She didn't have to tell him. He would have found out through their mothers, but she hoped he would be the one to tell Miles. Instead he says nothing. Miles is still deployed and he keeps asking Rachel to reconsider, to think how it will affect Miles. (Because Miles will always come first for him).

Rachel's hand shakes over her belly when she explains how Miles reacted to the news of the pregnancy. Bass's covers hers. "This isn't your only option."

"I love him." Rachel says. It's the truth. It may not be to the same degree that she'll ever love Miles, but Ben knows there was a man that came before whom she'd always love most. He never asked for his name.

\---

That night she offers to tell Ben about the baby's father, but he shakes his head and gestures to the photo on her fireplace of Bass, Miles and her at their graduation.

"Miles always said that he was in love with you." Ben says and he smiles like it's just a fact and nothing more. She feels a rush of relief that she cannot contain. She wraps her arms around him and squeezes tightly. Ben reassures her that it's okay.

It's only later that she realizes the _he_ in that sentence meant _Bass_ , and it's too late to clarify.

\---

Danielle dies.

This is during her wedding preparations. Ben does not now about Danielle or the truth behind _death by random mugging_. He doesn't know about the boyfriend who popped in and out of Danielle's life since she was fifteen - staying just long enough to leave her broken and bruised. Long enough for her to self destruct and throw her life into shambles.

_Dani died_ \- she writes to Miles, because even though she hates him at this moment she doesn't know how not to tell him - _just thought you should know._

\---

Miles shows up at Danielle’s funeral. 

His eyes dart back and forth between her and Ben, between the engagement ring sitting on her finger and the swell of her belly. When his eyes have taken in everything he's seen, he smiles and congratulates them both. It's a credit to how good of a soldier he is that he can lie his way through the whole service, through the ride back to their house, all the way until Ben leaves to get them dinner. Only then does he let out the breath he was holding and stares at Rachel.

"Let me explain." Rachel says when they are alone. She and Miles stand inches apart in the kitchen, ambling into each other’s spaces without noticing. Her fingers itch to reach out and touch him. She knows if she does that it will all crumble apart.

Miles shrugs, "There's nothing to explain." 

"He thinks this is Bass's kid." Rachel says.

"He can go on thinking that. I won't correct him." His eyes flicker back to her stomach, the strangest quirk of a smile finding its way there before it disappears into regret. "I deserve it. I deserve all of it."

Rachel does not disagree with him. To do so would be a lie. 

\---

Charlie looks a lot like Bass. Same big blue eyes, same hidden grin, same quiet determination - even as a toddler. Ben assumes this means something. Ben doesn't see the ambitious calculations behind those eyes, the rarity of that smile or the act-now-ask-questions-later attitude. He doesn't see Miles in her at all. Maybe it's because he's not looking for him, or maybe he suspects sometimes, but Ben never asked, always felt enough was implied.

And Rachel has never felt the need to correct him.

\---

part iii.

After he slaps the cuffs on her, he won't look her in the eye and yet, for the entire trip back to Philadelphia, he won't let her out of his sight. They eat and sleep in the same space. Miles rarely speaks to her.

"What do you want with me?" she asks when she has finally gained the courage to; when she gets tired of waiting for the man she loves to show his face.

"Bass wants you," he says and then when he's sure it's not enough for her, he adds. "He needs you."

"You're a shitty liar."

His fists clench again, like they always did when she said something that rubbed him the wrong way, but unlike before, she can't be sure that he won't react. She flinches and he looks visibly shaken by the sight of it.

There’s the briefest glimpse of the man she’s looking for –even if it is only his fear.

\---

General Monroe is nothing like the Bass she remembers. His eyes are colder and his smile is a ghost of what it once was. He tells her he has big plans for her. His charisma masks all the trouble behind those words, the tightness of his grip on her arms. She knows dangerous men too well not to see through it.

"What did you do to him?" Rachel asks as Miles leads her to her cage dressed up as a bedroom.

Miles finally looks at her, and when he does, there's nothing there. He sighs like he's seen it too. "What I do to everyone apparently."

\---

Charlie was a dancer once too. She'll never remember it. She was only three at the time. Messy braids and tutu that wouldn't sit straight. She had none of her mother's grace but all of her father's determination. It made for one laughable ballerina. She lasted six months. 

There's a photo in Miles' wallet. Rachel doesn't remember ever sending it to him, but Ben must have. It is of Charlie mid arabesque and it's the closest she ever looked to an actual dancer. The photo slips out when they are on the road between battles. 

Rachel bends down to pick it up, barely getting a smile in before Miles takes it from her. Their eyes don't meet as he tucks it back into his pocket and moves to the front of the pack to avoid her lingering gaze, leaving Jeremy to ride with her.

"He doesn't talk about it," Jeremy says, "But I like to pretend that somewhere out in the countryside, there's a little Matheson girl mastering sarcasm and leaving a trail of broken hearts wherever she goes."

Rachel looks north. The Wisconsin border is just a stone's throw away. It's been years. Rachel can only wonder if Jeremy speaks the truth.

\---

She never finds out why or how it happens, but somehow Miles and Bass fall apart. Miles has the opportunity to take the shot and doesn't. He abandons Rachel again, this time with a severely damaged General Monroe to watch over her.

"Miles thinks you're dead." Bass says. She thinks there's still a part of him that's still the boy her drove her to and from dance practice. She thinks he lies for her sake. 

"I am dead," Rachel says. Bass's hand hovers over her shoulder but disappears before he does anything foolish.

\---

Later, much later, when their paths have crossed yet again, when Ben dies proving Miles was right, when Rachel is just a little bit more broken and Miles a little bit more guilty, when their daughter clings to Miles like he is the answer intent on repeating her mother’s mistakes. Later then, they are trekking across Ohio when Charlie finds the photo of her in Miles' wallet. 

"You used to be a dancer," he says, "Just like your mother."

Charlie glances over at Rachel. "You danced?" 

Rachel smiles at the disbelief in her voice. Before she can say anything, Miles is answering for her.

"She sure did," Miles says, "It's how she met your father."

His hand lands on the small of her back as he leads them through a rough patch of forest. Rachel closes her eyes, and for just a second, she breathes in the truth.


End file.
